Co-op moving food store, but not pharmacy from Hillsdale

The Sherwood Co-op food store may be relocating from its store at Albert Street and 25th Avenue, but it’s not moving everything.

The pharmacy is going to stick around.

“We have a great pharmacy business there (and) we want to continue to look after those pharmacy clients,” said Troy Verboom, CEO of Sherwood Co-op. “That was our best bet to look after those pharmacy clients.”

The pharmacy is going to continue operating in its location at the back of the building, and Verboom said there will still be some grocery staples offered as well, like bread and milk.

The company wants to rent out the rest of the space in the building, but doesn’t have anything in place yet.

Verboom said people in the area rely on that location, and while they were hesitant to disappoint people with the move of the food store, the company wanted to make sure to continue to serve the pharmacy customers.

“The pharmacy business is a bit of a unique one,” Verboom said. “It’s a very relationship-based business and we have a great pharmacy team, great pharmacists who are committed to their patient and to their customer, so we wanted to maintain that presence there for that reason.”

He said the company wasn’t sure the customers would move with the pharmacy if it also went to the new location on Parliament Avenue in Harbour Landing.

When the Co-op bought the location on South Albert in 2013, Verboom said the company knew the building had a limited life. When the opportunity to get the Harbour Landing location came along in 2016, Co-op made the decision to move the food operation there.

The new Co-op store on Parliament Avenue in Harbour Landing is to open on Sept. 5, 2019. (Warren Woods/980 CJME)

Verboom said the move isn’t related to the Superstore moving in across the street, though he did later mention there’s a large grocery footprint in that area of Albert Street when explaining that the company wasn’t in a position to keep both the Harbour Landing store and the South Albert store open.

There will be a pharmacy in the new Co-op location as well, but Verboom said the business there will have to be built from the ground up.

The new Co-op Harbour Landing location opens Thursday at 8 a.m.